It would be hard to miss Darren Boyd. At 6ft 4in (1.93m), he seems enormous even sitting down, legs outstretched, as he contemplates a year that has laid the groundwork for a career as big as his stature. With roles including Stephen Mangan ’s sidekick in BBC comedy Dirk Gently, a reluctant agent in Sky1’s recently recommissioned MI5 caper, Spy, and a standout turn in BBC4’s acclaimed Python film, Holy Flying Circus, this has been a breakthrough period for the 41-year-old actor.

‘It feels like last year got really busy and ended with me going to my first awards ceremony,’ grins Boyd, who now has a British Comedy Award and a Bafta under his belt for Spy. ‘That felt good. I don’t do this to get prizes but it does feel like such an acknowledgement that you are connecting with people. Now I want to take it up a gear – I don’t want to become dependable.’

He’s back on our screens next week reprising his role as DC Simon Waterhouse in another Case Sensitive thriller on ITV1 and this time, his relationship with Olivia Williams’s DS Charlie Zailer is pricklier than before.

‘Simon and Charlie’s dysfunctional partnership is a real appeal,’ says Boyd. ‘I used to watch Cagney & Lacey with my mum back in the day. I can’t remember any of their storylines but I remember really knowing these two friends like I would know real people.’

Boyd’s detective turn in Case Sensitive is a far cry from his one in Dirk Gently, where he was the eye-rolling assistant to the oddball holistic sleuth created by Douglas Adams and played by Mangan. In fact, it’s one of his few bits of serious work.

Since Chris Langham spotted him in the West End production of Les Misérables and promptly cast him in the Caroline Quentin sitcom Kiss Me Kate, the most notable roles in his career have been funny ones. And that was never the plan.

‘After we’d filmed one series of Kiss Me Kate, everyone was saying: “The guy’s got great comic timing,” – that was the first I’d heard of it,’ he laughs. ‘I’m not a comedian, I don’t want to depend on a singular box of tricks. I like story and characters, to take on world views that are not my own.’

He’s also a risk-taker, which bore fruit when he played John Cleese in Holy Flying Circus, a hilarious Bafta-winning film about the censorship furore surrounding Monty Python’s Life Of Brian. ‘I was pulling excuses out of every orifice why I should not do that job,’ he says. ‘Because of fear, obviously – I was s***ting myself. Eventually, I got out of my own way.’

In truth, he’s closer to Cleese than he’d care to admit – not just in height but in his love of using physicality rather than vocabulary in the language of acting.

‘A character is as much about what you do as what you say,’ he says, after demonstrating the perfect Cleese stance (‘it’s like he has a fishing line pulling his head to the ceiling’). ‘You can have ten characters who have to leave a building and run across a car park to get to the car and out, and you can go from dramatic to serious to straight to absurd to funny to heartbreaking without saying a word.’

So who inspired Boyd most as a performer? Not Cleese but Stan Laurel. ‘He was who I responded to most,’ he says. ‘I still do, really. It’s spirit, it’s DNA.’

Like Laurel, Boyd also crossed the Pond, spending five fairly low-key years in LA and Canada. Is he back in Britain for good? ‘As long as I keep people guessing and happy, I will go where I need to,’ he says with a twinkle. ‘But I’m here for now.’